Bhubanswar, May 17: The Shree Jagannath Temple administration has landed in a soup after the city branch of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) refused to accept Rs 11 lakh that the shrine had received in hundis as donation in scrapped currency after March 31.

While announcing demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes last November, the Centre had fixed March 31 as the deadline for people and institutions to deposit the scrapped currency notes with the authorities. Official sources said the temple administration was depositing money with the bank and exchanging it till March 31. But, it continued to receive money even after the exchange deadline got over. Every day, the temple collects anything between Rs 2 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh in cash as donation.

"We have scrapped notes worth around Rs 11 lakh with us. We had approached the RBI head office, but they refused to accept it. We have decided to appeal to the RBI headquarters," said temple PRO Laxmidhar Pujapanda.

The matter was discussed at the temple management committee meeting, chaired by the Puri king Dibya Singh Deb, to ensure a smooth conduct of the coming car festival.

On the issue of Rs 100 crore embezzlement from the corpus fund of the Shree Jagannath Temple, the management decided to examine the irregularities and utilisation of funds by its accounts committee and submit a detailed report to the law department. Based on the audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, BJP leader Bijoy Mohapatra had earlier raised the issue of funds bungling.

Besides, the management took up another issue, that of whom it should allow to enter the snana mandap, the bathing altar of Lord Jagannath. After the divine bath using the 108 pitchers of water, the deities give darshan to the devotees from the mandap.

Servitors have agreed not to oppose Puri Shankaracharya Nischalananda Sarswati's climbing atop the mandap. The seer can come at any time to the mandap.

Earlier, a section of servitors had opposed this, saying that as the servitors' family members were not allowed to climb up the mandap, Shankaracharya should also be barred from the practice.

But as things stand now, half an hour will be reserved exclusively for the servitors' family when they will get Lord's darshan - but from a distance. The temple's chief administrator P.K. Jena said: "Only those, who have been authorised by the temple's record of rights, will be allowed to go to the mandap."

The issue earlier snowballed into a major controversy when in 2014 the temple administration had opposed the entourage of Shankaracharya from climbing atop the chariots. Later, Shankaracharya had boycotted the age-old tradition.